The product of Sky’s engagement with Google Video is now live, at skycast.com. But despite the site’s claims, it’ll only be ‘a new kind of entertainment experience’ if you’ve never seen YouTube. Frankly, if YouTube weren’t owned by Google, I bet they’d be considering a lawsuit. Your best starting points for now are the areas owned by various Sky channels, like News or Travel. (An eclectic choice of highlights from the News library, incidentally!)
The unique selling point, such as it is, is that ‘we will showcase our favourite ‘Clips of the Week’ on the Sky interactive TV platform and the very best home-grown entertainment will be hand picked to appear on national television.’ (The report in Media Guardian talks specifically about Soccer AM and Sky News.)
We’re in tricky territory here. Is it better to build your own community, or join an existing one? My inclination remains the latter, based principally on volumes of traffic, cost of development and maintenance, and the proven successes coming from YouTube and Myspace. Why bother… unless you’ve got something new, innovative and really substantial to offer? Granted, it’s early days for Skycast… but I don’t immediately see that compelling reason to upload my stuff to them, rather than the clear market leader.